Your views in 200 words or less

December 13, 2010 3:10 pm

Our nation was founded by a collection of radicals totally unlike those who today claim to be like the founders. Extremely rich people want our government to protect them and want to profit from our government. Just look at the tax issue, unemployment and war issues now before Congress.

Big companies profiteer from the wars, often leaving contracts unfulfilled even after receiving full payment, want lower income tax rates and write-offs that lead to refunds though they didn’t pay a tax, and object to pumping money into the economy through unemployment compensation even though it would improve the economy. We are a nation where infrastructure is being neglected because there isn’t enough money.

Many builders of this nation were prosperous and helped finance the revolution and expansion of our nation. This included Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis and even Benedict Arnold, committing personal wealth to finance their beliefs. They traveled without the benefit of government built highways, to build a great nation. Sometimes they were never reimbursed by Congress.

Today those claiming to emulate the founders refuse to contribute to the cost of government, including programs that help make them prosperous, such as schools, roads, safe communities and the military. If they really want to emulate the founding fathers they need to become radicals dedicated to the betterment of mankind. Try emulating our founders and some living wealthy people like Warren Buffet, Ted Turner and Bill Gates by being selfless rather than selfish.

The Founder DID contribute their fortunes, along with their lives and their sacred honor to help in the formation of the Union. They DID not steal from their fellow countrymen for that purpose. We are STILL free to donate to the treasury, if that is our choice, but we have NO choice where taxation is concerned. And the Founders were concerned with this little concept called “freedom,” to which monstrous government is inimical…

One must adhere to the philosophy of the founders, what you consider a radical is 180 degrees apart from what their view of Government and taxation was. We have grown apart from the ideals of the founders and people like yourself want us to wander off the road even further. Take for instance those who equate hunting a caribou to murder. Now that is a radical.

Dude, you have no idea what the extremely rich do in the way of charity. You should have some idea of what the government does in the way of colossal waste. Stands to reason a wealthy person didn’t get that way by being a profligate fool and that he may direct his giving to those institutions that use his money most efficiently–most unlike the government. Mind your own business and let those who create the wealth in this country mind theirs.

“some living wealthy people like Warren Buffet, Ted Turner and Bill Gates”

Funny – one of the big points was the inheritance tax being only 35% on estates over $5 million.

Yet by ‘pledging’ their fortunes to the Gates Foundation, Gates and Buffet are shielding most of their billions from that tax. Gates and Buffet know they can direct spending their money through the foundation better than the government can if the paid the tax on it.

It was Washington, Madison and Franklin who created the Federal government because they feared that an enfeebled government (the Confederation) was more dangerous than a too powerful central government. Read Ron Chernow’s new biography of Washington.

bobcat1a: The Founders made it very clear that they wanted the least amount of government possible. The Articles was a step toward that golden mean. What we have now would have appalled everyone but the monarchists who were left. But they would have recognized it as a milepost on the way to tyranny…

This letter from a Gig Harbor liberal shows most clearly that instead of building a second Narrows bridge, Tacoma should have blown up the old bridge.

If he thinks his taxes are too low, the letter writer should donate to the government whatever extra amount of money he thinks is appropriate.

In any event, I’d appreciate knowing how the public schools are a benefit to anyone who isn’t employed by them. If they give such a good result, why is the freshman year of college a remedial course for high school?

George Robison says, “Today those claiming to emulate the founders refuse to contribute to the cost of government, including programs that help make them prosperous, such as schools, roads, safe communities and the military.”

What an ignorant statement. First of all, how can someone refuse to contribute to any of those programs? They are funded out of tax revenues which no one can refuse to pay without going to jail. Unless Mr. Robison was referring to Tim Geithner, but he has never expressed any kind of desire to emulate the founders to my knowledge.

Second of all, there are some neighborhoods in which those who thought they were contributing to “safe communities” ought to get their money back.

“A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity.” Thomas Jefferson

“The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press.” Thomas Jefferson

“The way to have safe government is not to trust it all to the one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions in which he is competent….To let the National Government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and it’s foreign and federal relations….. The State Governments with the Civil Rights, Laws, Police and administration of what concerns the State generally. The Counties with the local concerns, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these Republics from the great national one down through all it’s subordinations until it ends in the administration of everyman’s farm by himself, by placing under everyone what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.”
Thomas Jefferson

My personal favorite…”The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body.”
Thomas Jefferson

“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
Thomas Jefferson

So what part is ignorant? I have the same views as Thomas Jefferson…the Jeffersonian Democracy? Probaly not because you are so wrapped up into yourself you do not have the ability to think outside the box, look at other viewpoints. I’m done with sumner I have nothing more to say…oh wait are you going to pick and choose a sentence in here, repost it, and say “I know you are but what am I”…you are pathetic!

First_Lefty says:
December 14, 2010 at 1:16 am
If anyone has a complaint about the size of government, they must have hated the GWB Administration who grew government to its largest size ever.
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Well “ever” meaning at the time. We’ve gone waaaay past GW’s “ever” and now it’s BH’s “ever”.

Yes, I hated that GWB grew the government, and I bet had the sore loser and JFHeinz/Kerry been president it would have been alot worse.
But… there’s no way to know.

The Founding Fathers never envisioned the nanny state the dem’s are trying to build in this country. This writer, like nearly all the leftists, neglect to mention the hundreds of social welfare dependencies they have created, and that they now want us to fund. If our taxes were only funding the things mentioned in the letter (schools, roads, safe communities and the military) we would not be experiencing the financial difficulties we are right now.

Revisionist history book publishers leave out crucial elements on every page of their false chronologies. George, you left out a whole bunch of truths, not the least of which is the crony capitalism, malfeasance and collusion you always get when two or more progressives get together, no matter the political vail they wear.

Although the saying “That government is best which governs least” is often attributed to Thomas Jefferson, we have not found this particular statement in his writings.

Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience (1849) is often identified as the real source of this quotation, but there may be an even earlier source. Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations[1] points to The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, whose editor wrote in 1837, “The best government is that which governs least.”[2]

Although the ideas expressed in this quotation may be in line with Jefferson’s opinions, the exact phrasing is almost certainly not Jefferson’s.

Footnotes

1. ↑ Suzy Platt, ed., Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations Requested from the Congressional Research Service (Washington D.C.: Library of Congress, 1989), http://www.bartleby.com/73/753.html.
2. ↑ A more in-depth analysis of this earlier source can be found in Paul F. Boller, Jr., Not So! Popular Myths About America from Columbus to Clinton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 49.

To reduce Paine’s thoughts to “small government” overlooks the fact that he was a liberal who argued for progressive taxation, a guaranteed minimum income, family allowances, old age pensions, and maternity grants. He also was rather vehement in his anti-organized religion rhetoric – so much so that only 6 people attended his funeral as he had so constantly offended Christendom. Those stances hardly put him in the same camp as the Fox viewers who would try to claim him as a fellow small government acolyte.

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